Jump In.

Finding Ultra by Rich Roll

Rich Roll tells his inspiring story of lazy, overweight, addicted into an all vegan and ultra marathon lifestyle

Key Takeaways

Rich Roll was a very overweight 40 year old who transformed himself with marathon training and a vegan diet

7 day juice cleanse that Rich used to start his transformation found here

Rich became a very good swimmer and had his choice of schools, eventually ending up at Stanford. He soon found that alcohol alleviated a lot of his social angst and consumed way too much.

He went to law school and partied too much, as he did in college and big city life was not conducive to him being sober. He somehow made it through, got a good job and was engaged but his alcoholism soon took away his marriage and job. He went to AA and eventually rehab, changing career from entertainment litigation to starting his own entertainment law firm, eventually finding his supportive and amazing wife along the way.

Rich wasn’t able to get into an Ironman initially so he set his sights even higher, an Ultraman. He trained professionally for the first time in his life and ended up having tremendous success although he was one of the few amateurs in this field

While training, had a really bad accident but decided to keep his dream alive. Security is a cop out. Embrace the fear and unknown

The rest of the book describes his incredible struggle of doing 5 ironman length races in a week. Amazing determination

Book ends with his tips on nutrition, recipes and more. Obviously plant based, but also no gluten or dairy and has recommendations for which plants and fats to load up on

What I got out of it

People can do much more than they think they can. When you feel like you can’t do any more, you’re likely only 40% there. Keep pushing. He also does a good job of advocating his “plant power” lifestyle but asks you to experiment for yourself and do what makes you feel good. I’m a big fan of this as I don’t believe there typically is a “one size fits all” for diet, nutrition, lifestyle, etc.